Only a brief stop was made at Divide to enable me to replenish my larder; then we hustled on toward the famous mining camp.
Early every afternoon a thunder shower drenched our party. Once or twice the thunder in advance warned us so we could pitch tent and crawl under shelter. Thus our travels in that region were impeded.
Three miles beyond Gillette we climbed to Altman, said to be the highest incorporated town in the United States, some 11,300 feet above the sea. It rests literally on the summit and hangs down over the mountain sides secure enough whenever and wherever there is a prospect hole with sufficient gold in it to serve the miners a foothold and check their sliding further. The high altitude of the district makes it especially undesirable for women, causing nervous troubles. Even the male population are more or less excitable, and when prospectors think they have made a strike some of them run about like lunatics.
From Altman we took a tortuous trail, threading Goldfield, Independence, Victor and Anaconda. The mountains about are honeycombed with prospect holes—or graves they might be properly called, for many of them contain buried hopes. From a distance they look like prairie-dog towns, but occasional shaft-houses and gallows-frames rise here and there to give character to the mining region, while several railroad and electric car lines wind about the hills and gulches.
Many of the cabins in these towns are built of logs; the streets look to have been surveyed by cows rather than engineers. As a rule, there is no symmetry to the thoroughfares—up hill and down hill, crooking and winding, crossing and converging, in a manner to puzzle a resident of a year. The situation of most of the habitations seems to have been governed by the location of the claim of each house owner. This great camp got its name from two circumstances occurring when the locality was known for no other virtue than a grazing place for cattle. One day on the banks of the creek that trickled through the present site of Cripple Creek a man broke his leg, and the following day a cowboy was thrown from his bronco and had his arm broken. Some one, seeing both accidents, said: "I reckon we'd better call this place Cripple Creek." So the noted camp was christened.
[CHAPTER XXXIX.]
Baby girl named for Pod
BY MAC A'RONY.
You do ill to teach the child such words; he teaches him to kick, and to hack, which they'll do fast enough of themselves; and to call horum;—fye upon you!—Merry Wives of Windsor.
Frequently since crossing the Mississippi Pod had received letters from proud parents informing him that they had named their latest boy after him. At that time in Cripple Creek, several boys ranging from a day to six weeks old, whose destinies were thought to be promising, were afflicted with my master's ponderous name.